Head lurched, surprised and in shock, and turned. Deese, coming up behind and to the side of Cole, hit him on the forehead with the table leg with a resounding crack that sounded like a dead branch being broken.
Cole said, “Jesus,” as Pumpkin Head went down flat but somehow kept the muzzle of his weapon on Harrelson. “On the wall, on the wall, motherfucker. Put your hands up on the wall. Put them up.”
Pumpkin Head struggled to his hands and knees, groaning—“Ow! Ow! Ow!”—and Deese kicked him in the ribs. And when Pumpkin Head went down again, Deese stepped over his body and said to Harrelson, “Don’t make me beat you to death. Open the fuckin’ trunk on the Porsche.”
Harrelson, red-faced and angry, but not obviously frightened, said, “I gotta get my keys outta my pocket. We’re not gonna fight you. And don’t hurt Dopey no more.”
“I’ll fuckin’ kill him if I fuckin’ feel like it, fuckin’ Dopey,” Deese said.
Harrelson took a key fob out of his pocket, pushed a button, and the back hatch of the Porsche opened up to reveal a set of golf clubs and a gym bag. The bag was full of golf shirts, two pair of golf shoes, and a plastic bag full of dirty shirts. Deese pulled up the floor mat: nothing there but a spare tire and tools.
“I’m gonna ask you only once,” Deese said. “Where’s the money?”
Dopey/Pumpkin Head was still on the floor, still groaning, but now it was “Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh!” Deese kicked him again and he yelped, and Harrelson said, “I’ve got a roll in my pocket, and Dopey has a thousand, probably.”
Deese lashed out with the table leg and hit Harrelson on the side of the face, opening a gash across his cheekbone and knocking him against the garage wall and then down on his butt. A rake hanging on the wall fell on top of him.
Deese said, “Get the fuck up or I’ll break your fuckin’ kneecaps.”
Cole said, “Easy, we don’t want to kill him. We won’t get the money if we kill him.”
“I’m not gonna kill him, but if he doesn’t tell me about the money I’m gonna cripple everything but his mouth.” Harrelson was struggling to get up, and Deese kicked him in the thigh and he went down again, and Deese asked, “You wanna play golf in a wheelchair?”
“There’s more money in the house . . . Maybe a few thousand.”
Harrelson had dropped the fob when Deese hit him, and now Cole scooped it up and said, “Get him in the house. When we go through the door, you might hear an alarm pad start to beep. We’ll give him ten seconds to disarm it. If he doesn’t, we gotta run. Stand back, because I’ll put a bullet in his brain for our trouble and then one in Dopey’s. You don’t want to get the blood on you because of that DNA shit.” Cole doing his fright bit.
“Got it,” Deese said.
“Alarm’s turned off,” Harrelson muttered. “Don’t hurt us and I’ll get the cash. The cash we’ve got.”
* * *
—
THE DOOR to the house opened, and a blond woman with big Texas hair stuck her head in the garage and said, in her Texan drawl, “What the f—” before Deese hit her in the face and knocked her on her ass and back into the house. Harrelson shouted,”Hey!” and Cole stuck the gun in his face.
Harrelson asked, “What? You’re gonna murder me in cold blood?”
Deese said, “Fuck, yeah, and enjoy the shit out of it,” and pointed the gun at his head.
Harrelson didn’t flinch, and Cole said to Deese, “Remember the money,” and Deese said, “Okay,” and shot Dopey in the hip, the discharge sounding like a cannon in the enclosed space. Cole jumped, Dopey screamed, and Harrelson shouted, “Stop it, for Christ’s sakes. We’ll give you the money.”
* * *
—
GLORIA HARRELSON was crawling across the kitchen floor, dripping blood from her nose and coughing. Deese wagged his gun at Harrelson and said, “Get in the house,” and Harrelson walked past Cole and into the house and said, “We gotta get an ambulance for Dopey.”
Deese: “Fuck him, let him die.”
Dopey’s hair was scraped back into a ponytail, and Deese said to Cole, “Put your gun on this asshole,” meaning Harrelson, and when Cole did Deese backed up to Dopey and grabbed his hair and dragged him, screaming, into the house and dumped him on the floor. Gloria Harrelson was still crawling toward the kitchen, and Deese